


Luminous Arrows

by icarus_chained



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Changelings, Developing Relationship, Disability, Fantasy, Identity Reveal, Illusions, Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, Lies, M/M, Original Fiction, Romance, Secrets, Truth, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: People in Arden Nailo's line of work cannot afford weaknesses like Hieronymus Xiloscient, shabby illusionist wizards with no idea of the knives in the dark. But maybe there's more to both Nailo and Hieronymus than it seems.
Relationships: Arden Nailo|Dar/Hieronymus Xiloscient, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 18
Kudos: 54





	Luminous Arrows

Nailo’s wizard kept rooms in a shabby attic space in the University District. Three rooms, to be specific, all in a line, the knocked-together roof spaces of several conjoined buildings. They were familiar spaces by now. Old, creaking, drafty. Piled thick with rugs and tired wall hangings, lit hazily by dwarven gas lamps. Absolutely crammed, floor to ceiling, wall after wall, with books and journals and scrolls and treatises. Not even on bookcases, but piled and strewn wherever there were a spare few inches of space. There was a bed, somewhere in there. A small, stone-lined stove, a table to eat off. You wouldn’t necessarily realise it at a glance.

They were nothing shocking, those rooms. Not for a wizard. Maybe the tiredness of the place. The shabbiness that was edging past genteel and into run-down. That was disinterest more than anything else. Nailo hadn’t investigated, precisely, but he had the sense that his wizard would not lack for funds if he really needed them. It was only habit that kept him living somewhere just shy of crumbling. Habit, or possibly the aesthetic.

Hieronymus was an illusionist, after all. They tended to take some amusement from the looks of things when compared to the realities.

He was working now. Hieronymus. Hunched over a windowsill, in lieu of a desk, a tome open to one side, scratching away at a journal. Notes, or translations. Probably history, not magic. There was no aura or weight to the air. But something intriguing, nonetheless, enough for him to be focused, absorbed. Scratching idly at his nose with the tip of his quill every now and then. Mumbling absently to himself under his breath.

Nailo watched him. A rooftop across the street, tucked into the shadow of a chimney. He looked down at Hiero’s ‘desk’ through the dormer window, watching his lover sit right out in the open, caught up in his studies and oblivious to the world. Oblivious to the man watching him across the street. To the dozens of ways into those rooms. To the hundreds of means, from arrows to knives to poisons to fire, for one idly interested party to just …

Cut him off. Cut him away. Make an emptiness where Hieronymus Xiloscient used to be.

Of course, there was no guarantee that the wizard was truly as oblivious as he seemed. There was no guarantee, either, that it was even Hieronymus himself sitting at that window. The puzzle and challenge of illusionists. The reason they made interesting, annoying, occasionally deadly targets. The appearance of the thing was not always the reality. There was danger when you couldn’t rely on what you sensed. When you couldn’t rely on _yourself_.

But it wasn’t … that much of a challenge. Not this one. Not this wizard. That was the problem. Nailo knew him too well, now. Knew him enough to know that Hiero didn’t think like that. His enchantment with illusion was of a different nature to Nailo’s. A different nature to most, even.

The most curious thing. The most enchanting. An illusionist who used his magic not to hide, but to reveal. To illustrate, _illuminate_. Not a mask, but a reflection. A mirror to show people what was really there. And, more, what _could_ be there. With a little work. Imagination. Care.

A liar whose lies were made to serve the truth. He’d said so. Such a strange, fascinating, deadly sort of thing.

Nailo hunched back into his shadows. Hugged his arms across his chest. The street yawned between them. A gulf. His wizard sat at his window, absent and absorbed, oblivious to all the thousand knives out here in the dark. The thousand lies that lived at Nailo’s back, that trailed in his shadow. The lies, and the eyes, gradually turning towards them.

Not yet. Not tonight. But soon enough. And Nailo could not allow it.

This mask had been made for a purpose. A shadow to hide behind. Falling for a thing like Hiero was … beyond foolish. A near-breath-taking mistake. Hieronymus did not fit. Not any purpose Arden Nailo had been made for. He sat there like a luminous arrow, pointing the path to Nailo’s weaknesses. His vulnerabilities. 

His heart.

It had to be fixed. Tonight. Before it got any worse. It had to change.

Nailo just … had to do it _right_.

He moved, finally. After what was maybe minutes, maybe an hour. He uncurled himself. A shadow among shadows, a knife among knives. Old habits. Old rhythms and old rhymes. He slipped across the rooftops a little further down the street. Rooflines in the University District were among the easiest to traverse. The buildings were tall, and leaned drunkenly. Like wizards themselves, in some ways. Tottering down the street, arms slung across each other, leaning tipsily every which way. What was a gulf in some spots, a canyon down to the cobblestones, was a hop and a skip in others.

You had to know your target, here. It was so easy to climb into a lodging and slide a blade across a throat. The only thing keeping half of them from being murdered every other night was the need to know which of them could immolate you with a sneeze if they happened to need the chamber pot at the wrong moment and didn’t happen to be happily asleep.

That, and the alarm spells. The traps. The doorknobs that suddenly opened mouths and screamed under your hand. The usual annoyances of hunting more paranoid prey. But that could happen anywhere. It was just more _frequent_ around here.

If only Hiero had been one of them. He could have justified putting this off a little longer if he could have trusted some paranoia to keep the man alive.

But no. No, his wizard was made of different stuff. So now he had a job to do.

He slipped in another dormer window. Down the other end of the set of rooms, in what you might loosely call Hiero’s kitchen. Risky. There tended to be pots and cups and books piled over every surface. Climbing in without sounding like a pack mule falling down a set of stairs took some dexterity. But Nailo was long familiar with every little peccadillo his wizard possessed.

Hiero didn’t look up. Not even when he crossed into the room and ghosted over to lean against a wall just behind and to one side of him. Peripheral vision should have caught him. He hadn’t made too much effort to avoid it. But Hiero was well and truly absorbed now. Chewing on his quill, rather than scribbling with it. Lost inside his head, mulling something over.

Or picturing how to bring it to life. To paint it in magic, an illusion almost good enough to be the real thing. A shimmering fantasy, or a memory of a long-lost time.

Nailo just looked at him for a long minute. Looked, really _looked_. Weighed him, in all his ridiculous, shabby glory.

Why this man, he asked his heart? Why this one?

Physically, Hieronymus was nothing to write home about. Or, he _was_ , but not in any friendly way. Another curiosity, to add to many. A deformed elf. So they called him, anyway. In a world of wonders, of magics to heal any injury up to and including death. Among a people renowned for their beauty and physical perfection. Here sat Hieronymus, with his bent and twisted spine, his half-clawed left hand, his grey and haggard face. His stringy hair, his colourless eyes. Nothing like the picture of an elf.

A curse, rumours said. On his parents, not him. The deformity had been inborn. A curse resistant to any attempt to alleviate it. Gods themselves could lay their hands on him, and be rebuffed. Or so they said. ‘They’, the ubiquitous ‘they’. Hiero himself had never given much comment on it.

Except one. Once. To a heckler in the street, not to Nailo. He didn’t know if Hiero even knew he’d overheard it. But it had been vital. That one comment. An idle riposte, to a stranger in the street, but it was half of why Nailo was here now.

It was half of why … he planned to do what he did.

Only this man. Only Hieronymus Xiloscient. An illusionist who did not view illusions as everyone else viewed them. A man who did not view _anything_ as others viewed it.

Only for him, would the man called Arden Nailo allow himself this hope.

He coughed gently. An alert, an audible poke to his wizard’s attention. It bounced off, repelled by the sheer depth of the man’s absorption. Nailo smiled, briefly, a darting smirk of fondness, and coughed again. Louder, this time. Loud enough.

Hiero started. Flinched, clumsily, and came within a hair of knocking his book and notes out into the street. Only some aggravated scrambling saved them, and not even that saved the ink pot. They listened to it smash, somewhere below. Listened to the annoyed shout from whoever had narrowly avoided the impromptu missile. Nobody too fussed, though. Ink pots dropping out of upper windows weren’t all that uncommon in the University District either. Hiero winced, but didn’t bother to call down an apology. 

He turned to look at Nailo instead. Wry, tired. And smiling faintly in amused reproval.

Nailo sketched a small bow. A flick of his hand to his chest. Hiero snorted, and shook his head. He gathered up his notes more securely, and grabbed down beside him for the nearest heavy thing off the floor to use as a paperweight. What emerged looked like a shard of a fire grate. He blinked at it, possibly wondering where it had come from, but plopped it down on his books anyway. Nailo felt his eyes flick closed. A press of weight in his chest. Fondness. Then it passed.

He opened his eyes again, and moved over to lean precariously against the wall beside the window. Or the piles of books against the wall beside the window. So Hiero could see him, and the street and the rooftops could not.

He meant to open his mouth. To broach the necessary conversation. He _meant_ to do that. Instead, looking down at a pale, welcoming face, at amused, colourless eyes, he found himself leaning down instead. A hand on that twisted left shoulder, a gentle brace, and another to cup a chin. To guide a mouth to his. His eyes drifted closed again as soft, dry lips touched his. He felt Hiero smile up into the kiss. Felt the easy warmth and welcome there. Like coming home.

He kept his eyes closed as the kiss tapered off. Stayed bent, stayed leaning. Rested their foreheads together. Brow on brow. Hiero let him. One hand lightly touched at Nailo’s elbow. Soft and steady. Letting him rest as he pleased.

Decision crystallised. Hardened, immovable. Irreversible. 

No going back from here.

“I need to talk to you,” he said softly. Still blind, still bent. Eyes closed and holding close. Hiero hummed gently. Encouragingly. Content to be the prop that held Nailo up. Content to wait patiently for mysteries to reveal themselves to him. Nailo huffed a laugh, and managed to stand. Managed to lift himself up enough to look down at him. 

Hiero looked back. A soft curve to his lips, not so much a smile as the potential for smiling. Patience and confidence and curiosity in his gentle lack of an expression. Or perhaps Nailo was reading too much into it. Though perhaps not. He was a student of natures, Arden Nailo. Or the man _behind_ Arden Nailo. He knew how to see things others did not.

He knew how to conceal them, too. And then, much later, to reveal them.

“Are you in trouble?” Hiero asked. Mildly. Only mildly. For a man who knew far too much of what Nailo was and what Nailo did, he could be remarkably unperturbed by the thought of it. Nailo wondered sometimes if it _was_ obliviousness. If his wizard didn’t really believe in the reality of it. The knives and the blood. Dark deeds done for what was _possibly_ the greater good, and possibly for nothing at all. Hiero was always so calm about the thought. Like it was a history or a fantasy in one of his books. An illusion, a picture he could wave his hand through. How much did he really believe it was _real_?

How much _was_ it real? An old question, brought back into sharp relief by keeping the company of an illusionist for too long. Was it any more real for being the death of people? Lies could kill people too. Illusions. Make them strong enough, and they could kill for real. Did that make them any more the truth?

_Are you in trouble?_ , the illusionist asked. Oh, if only he knew.

But then, that was the point here.

Nailo smiled. A flick of a thing, rueful, like a blade in the dark. He leaned back, against his pile of books pretending to be a wall. His expression flickered. He knew it did. Dropping things. Revealing things, if only in glimpses. Hiero straightened a little. Softness melting to concern. A haggard face, a stiff, hunched shoulder. The most luminous thing in the world.

“Yes,” Nailo said. Softly and wryly. “I am in trouble, yes. So very much. You’ve made my life … so very complicated, Hiero. So very strange.”

Hiero blinked at him. Worried, yes. Shading towards alarmed. Only once before had Nailo ever admitted a _complication_ to him, and he’d been bleeding rather profusely at the time. That was nothing to this. He knew it had to show. Blood and bleeding were nothing much, in the end. But lies and truth. The illusions and the realities. Complications. Arrows pointing to the man behind the face. You’ve made my life so complicated, he’d said. An accusation, laid so gently at Hiero’s door. Or window. The man did stiffen in worry a little.

But not much. Not so much. He had always been so oddly nerveless about Nailo. About his business, about his nature. The blood and the bleeding. An assassin came to him out of the night. Slipped inside his home, his life, his defences. Hiero batted not an eye. Never had.

Trust, or obliviousness? Illusions or truth?

Let’s find out.

“I want to know if you remember something,” he said. Ambling absently around to the point. “Something you said once. I’ve wanted to ask you about it.”

Hiero eyed him. Canted his head over to his right shoulder. His neck bent farther that way, allowed him more leeway. The action bared the vulnerability a little bit. Highlighted the deformity. And that … that was part of it, yes. 

“Go ahead,” he said, nerveless and gentle. Waving a hand to invite Nailo on. “I can’t promise to remember it, but I’ll answer if I do.”

Nailo felt his mouth stretch out to a grin. A half-mirthless thing, raw with the weight of fondness. A man with nothing to hide. An _illusionist_ with nothing to hide. Oh, what a thing, for a man of his nature to find.

“’If it served a purpose, I would wear one,’” he quoted. “’But even lies should serve a truth, and that one would serve no good one’. Do you remember that? You were talking to a man in the street. Some weeks ago. After one of your demonstrations. He asked you why you didn’t … hide your flaws. You remember it?”

And here, he did blink. Just a little bit. Here, the wizard did falter. But not for long.

“I remember,” he said. A carefulness to his tone. A sense of a man who knew himself to be edging out over uncertain ground. Not quite understanding why. “I didn’t realise you were there. I didn’t know you watched my little shows.”

This with some censure. Some pride, some amusement. All light over the sudden wariness. Nailo smiled anyway.

“I do,” he said simply. In truth, he was quite fond of them. Again, for the absurdity as much as anything else. A wizard of his calibre. A historian with his name in many libraries. And he put on shows in the street, words and illusions spun to passers-by. Illustrations of history. Of fantasy. Pretty light shows spun not to fool, but illuminate. A respite from drudgery. Fairy tales for children.

What a thing, what a thing his lover was. His wizard.

“Oh,” said Hieronymus. He looked somewhat nonplussed. He looked _pleased_. Half-shy. “Oh, I … I didn’t know that. You didn’t say.”

… No. No, Nailo hadn’t. To Hiero, or to anyone else. But then there was a reason for that. Whether that reason had been in service of anything good … Well. A different question.

“I didn’t want anyone to know,” he said quietly. “A man in my business doesn’t want people to know who he watches. Who he follows. Whose window he keeps returning to. It doesn’t last forever. Sooner or later someone learns. But I wanted to hold it off as long as possible. To keep from … having to make a choice.”

And here. Here was their unsteady ground. He saw Hiero realise it. Saw him lay it out, and know immediately what it meant. 

Choices. For a man in Nailo’s line of work.

Something shuttered briefly in his wizard’s eyes. Not quite nerveless, now. But not afraid either. Not worried. Only … perhaps slightly sad.

“So,” he said softly. “I take it our time has run out, then. The time for choices is now?”

Nailo inclined his head. Honesty for honesty. He should clarify, he knew. Lessen the threat. But there was … something so fascinating about that pale nervelessness of the man. The bent, twisted form, and the patient, nerveless honesty that defied it. Endlessly beautiful. Endlessly fascinating.

“I wanted to ask you a question first,” he murmured. Nothing gentle, but easier than he was with anyone else in the world, save an old and precious few. “About that day. About what you said. Even lies should serve a truth. But only a good one. It’s such a strange philosophy for an illusionist to have. Tell me, Hiero. What truth would be good enough? For an illusionist to let himself hide behind a lie.”

His own safety clearly wasn’t. Nailo had seen enough of how people reacted to him, to his price for his parents’ presumed sins. He was an illusionist. Nailo had no doubt he knew the spells to hide it away. Walk freely behind a different face. A less twisted form. But if personal safety clearly wasn’t a good enough cause, what would be?

What excuse would a man like Hieronymus Xiloscient accept, for wearing a different face?

And he narrowed his eyes. Hiero. He knew Nailo enough to sense something different beneath the question. Some secret, some truth. Not enough to guess. Nailo was confident enough of himself to know that most of his secrets were still intact, no matter how clever a man his wizard might be. But Hiero _was_ an illusionist. He was a patient, placid, curious man, who knew so well how to let the mysteries of the world slowly filter up beneath his hands.

Or maybe he was only drawing a line. Between the choice and the question. Wondering what answer Nailo needed to make the choice between stay or leave.

Between, possibly, stay or _kill_. But there was not enough fear in Hiero for him to be wondering that. And Nailo was beginning to very much doubt that it was truly obliviousness.

“… I don’t know,” he said at last. Slow and thoughtful, as he looked at Nailo. “I don’t know, Arden. I haven’t found one. But, truthfully, I haven’t been looking.” He smiled faintly. Not quite bitterly. “I value truth. I like to know how people react to what they see. But illusions are … They’re strange, aren’t they? They’re lies. They’re not real. But they can show things. Help people understand things. And they … You can make them real. Enough to hurt people. There are spells I know, that can make people believe their own false pain enough to die from it. The line between lie and truth is … frailer than people think, and it’s not only magic that makes it so. Tell a story enough, and it becomes history. I’ve been alive two hundred years. Not long for an elf, but long enough for other races. I _know_ their lies. I was there when they wrote them. But if enough time passes, will I start to believe them too?” He smiled, and shook his head. “The truth is, I don’t wear illusions because this is the truth I want people to see, the one I want them to react to. But if there was something I wanted more, maybe that would be reason enough to … to build a different truth. One that matters to me. Pare it down and … perhaps that’s the only criteria. A good truth is one that matters to me.”

A good truth is one that matters to me. Oh, Nailo thought. Oh. Well then.

And he wasn’t surprised. He’d _hoped_. Hieronymus Xiloscient fit no purpose that Arden Nailo had been made for. So here was the choice. A lie that had served a purpose that may or may not have been good, may or may not have been true. Or … a truth that mattered.

He smiled. Knew even as he did so that it was a strange expression. An alarming one, unless a man was as nerveless as an honest illusionist, anyway. Still. Hiero’s eyes did widen. Less for that, maybe, than for what followed. Away from the window, away from the street. Behind a pile of books pretending to be a wall, more shield than even they knew. Shield for a sight almost no one not of the blood had ever been allowed to see.

He knew what it looked like. What a sight it made as ‘Arden Nailo’ melted away, sloughed off like an old skin, almost _exactly_ like an old skin, while an older and deeper truth came to the fore in his place. An older face, a different face. A _truer_ face. In certain ways.

Hiero’s breath hitched. He caught it. Held it. Held his questions, held his responses. The man who had been Nailo knew he had them. But he had guesses too. An intelligent illusionist. A _historian_. He had guesses too. And surmises. Perhaps even correct ones.

“My name is Dar,” the man who had been Nailo said. His face shifted again slightly as he said it. Just a subtle flicker of the features. The way one said their name in this form. He knew Hiero caught it. Knew his lover saw it, noted it. Tried not to feel delighted. “The name of this face is Dar. It is the one I was born with. I am … I think you might know what I am.”

Hiero nodded. That strange half-twitch of his mouth. Less a smile than the possibility of smiling. He was stunned. Worried. But he was patient and curious too. And a connoisseur of lies worth telling, and the truths that underlaid them.

Oh, Dar had been right to hope. He _hoped_.

“Changeling,” his wizard said softly. “You’re a changeling. And Arden Nailo was … a face?”

“A persona,” Dar corrected. Gently enough. “Not mine, originally. We share them. But mine for some years now. I was the only one … Nailo was made for certain purposes. I was the only one this time with the temperament for them.”

Not everyone was made for the blood and the bleeding. That he _had_ shared with Nailo. Dark deeds done for questionable causes. The hope of a greater good, but the knowledge of the futility of it. It took a certain nature to bear such a face. It was necessary sometimes. To steer things certain ways. So they maintained the persona, kept the option open to them. But of his siblings, of his clan, Dar had been the only one this generation to be able for it.

Though … not for long. As it turned out. Only for so long. Hence the complications.

Hiero blinked at him. A historian. More even than the illusionist, the historian had thoughts here. Surmises. Maybe he knew something of their history. Changelings. Maybe he knew what tended to happen when they were revealed. Why they might … make a face to prevent such things. A shadow with a knife. At home among all the other knives.

Maybe he knew enough to wonder why Dar might show it to him. And what the cost might be.

He did. Dar saw it. The not-smile was there again. The thing that was rueful, and slightly sad. And not afraid at all. Not at all oblivious to the truth.

There had been choices for Nailo. There were choices for Dar too. 

“You were not intended,” Dar said. Almost helplessly. “You were nothing Arden Nailo should have allowed. That face was not made for … for things like you. Nailo was built for killing. For blood. Not for the things he did with you. Not the things he _felt_ for you.”

Hiero blinked. His eyelids shuttered. Half pain. Not hope. His smile wobbled and slid. But stayed. Endured.

“Felt?” he asked. Carefully. “Things … _Nailo_ felt?”

And yes. There was the crux. The truth behind the lie. Behind all the faces. There had to be one. The thing his illusionist had instinctively understood, where almost no one did. The faces were shared. The lives, the names. You could live inside them for decades. Lies so strong they were almost real. But there had to be a truth behind them. A man. There had to be a cause they served, a truth you wanted people to see, or how much was really real?

“Things I felt,” he agreed. “Not Nailo. Things _I_ felt. Things I _feel_. You were nothing Nailo was made for. And now I have to choose between you and him. Now I have to choose … which truth matters more.”

Nailo had been needed. He was always needed. There was a reason they’d made him an elf. A lifespan that would give them an excuse to keep coming back to the persona. Changeling after changeling. Whoever had the temperament to wear that face for their cause. Their survival. Whoever could be the shadow among shadows, the knife in the night.

But there had been times when no one could. When no one was, when no one had it. Dar had worn the face a long time. But maybe he didn’t need to wear it forever. Even if there was no one else.

Of course, that all depended …

“And you have to choose too,” he noted. Careful himself, now. “Nailo was one thing. Dar is another. You have to choose which truth you can bear as well.”

Because he had lied. To Hiero, the illusionist who so valued truth. The man who refused to hide what he was, no matter how much easier it would make his life. His luminous wizard, who believed that even lies should serve a truth, and that illusions were better used to illuminate, not to hide. 

Much had been shared, between Dar and Nailo. Much had emerged in _spite_ of Nailo. But that might not be enough. As when any illusion fell through, decisions might change with the truth.

A good truth was one that mattered. But only if it mattered _enough_.

Hiero looked at him. For the longest time. Dar looked desperately back. Studied him, fixed his image in his mind. The strange elf with his hunched back, his twisted spine. His eyes almost as colourless as Dar’s own, as a changeling’s. Much like a changeling. A cursed, washed-out creature. 

A beautiful, patient, nerveless man.

Hiero ducked his head suddenly. Bowed it down, against the stiffness of his neck, and smiled absently into nothing. A little huff, a breath of air. His hand, the clawed left one, reached out. Touched Dar’s, almost a question, and then gathered it carefully in. Held it, just gently. Content to let the mysteries of the world fill his palm.

“… I will confess to some disappointment,” he said quietly. But not cruelly. “For the lifespan, mostly. Arden Nailo had … I would have had time. An eternity, to earn his trust. To share his space. Dar will not have nearly so much, I think. But then …” He looked up. Rueful and wry. “Then I suppose Arden might not have either. Being what he was. And how little men like him could afford men like me.”

Dar laughed breathlessly. As if it was punched out of him. 

“No one can afford a man like you,” he shot back. Entirely honestly. “No one can afford you. But yes. There are people who … Our time was running out. There are knives in the dark, Hiero. Most of them are not as soft as me. Nailo in truth, not a man wearing his face. They would have found out soon. He was watched too much for that not to be so. Secrets are always learned in time. Illusions fall through. I had to come tonight. I had to make a choice. We’d run out of time.”

Hiero nodded. Patient and curious as always. Not afraid. Somehow, never afraid. Even without the comfort of illusion. Or perhaps especially without the comfort of illusion.

“You didn’t choose Nailo, did you,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. Soft and thick, with a thing that was not hope, but it wasn’t a question. It was faith. “You didn’t tell me this to kill me.”

Dar smiled wetly. “No,” he agreed. “No, I didn’t. I need to tell my clan. I need to arrange Nailo’s disappearance, if not his death. Depends on if the clan needs him alive or not. No one we have now can wear him, but someone might come later who can. Elves are handy that way. You can pass them down for quite a while before you have to replace them. But I … You’re nothing Nailo can allow. And I have to choose which truth matters more.”

Hiero was silent for a moment. An odd, thoughtful silence. Nothing Dar had seen from him before. His crooked fingers rubbed lightly through Dar’s.

“Perhaps …” he said slowly. “Perhaps your clan might be willing to trade him, then. One elf for another. Just as useful, for just as long. A … historian, this time. An illusionist. A man who writes books, and tells stories in the street. Stories that change … who are seen as the villains and who the victims. Books that remember lies, and build truths. That … might be as useful. As knives in the dark. Hmm?”

He looked up. A placid, haggard face. A nerveless man. A man who had never, not once, been afraid. Not oblivious, Dar thought, with a thrill of final certainty. Once and for all. Not from obliviousness.

He _was_ an illusionist. Hieronymus Xiloscient. The kind that made deadly enemies.

“Were you planning to kill them?” he heard himself asking. “You knew, didn’t you. You knew someone would come for us eventually. Were you planning to kill them?”

Hiero smiled crookedly. Wry and slightly sad. 

“I told you,” he said. “There are spells I know that can make a man believe the illusion of pain enough that he dies of it. It’s not just magic that can do that. I was there when so many of the lies were written, and there were times I did the writing. All I need is a truth that matters to me, and I will happily write some more. Especially if they may not be quite the lies they seem.” 

Because villain and victim depended very much on the point of view. There were _reasons_ Dar’s people had to wear faces. Why they needed knives for when those faces were revealed. None of them would ever show … 

Only for Hiero. Only someone like him. They would never risk it for anyone short of him.

To show him a true face. To show him a true _name_.

And for a reason. For such a reason. Hiero held his hand. Tight and warm. Looked up at him. So strange. So luminous. A crooked, cursed, half-made thing, with that brightly burning honesty that belied it.

“I have a truth,” his wizard whispered up at him. “A truth I want people to see, a truth I want them to react to. Because I have been waiting, for a very long time, for someone to react the right way. Knowing that, if someone ever did, there would be very, very little I would not do to keep them. The truth they offer me in return.” He smiled lopsidedly. “I didn’t want to press. I would have spent a lifetime, to earn Nailo’s trust. I can do the same, to earn yours.”

Dar laughed again. Still breathless. Nerveless man. Gods. Such a nerveless man.

“I don’t know how long it might have taken you to earn Nailo’s,” he said. “But rest assured. You have found a shortcut to mine. Nearly before I knew it.”

He meant it honestly. A man like Arden Nailo, with all that he had been built for, was neither designed from trust nor for it. Hieronymus was nothing he’d been built for, and perhaps a man who could wear him as he had been designed to be worn would have … would have killed him. Wiped him away. But perhaps not. Perhaps anyone who’d met him would have crumbled before him anyway. Assassin or otherwise.

Illusionists were always such interesting, aggravating, _deadly_ targets. They made it so you couldn’t trust yourself. And Hiero was so much more of an illusionist than Dar had let himself believe.

But so worth it. In the end. Whether truth or a lie, illusion or reality. So very, very worth it.

Hiero looked up at him. A gentle lack of an expression, patient and curious and calm. He tugged him down, not to a kiss, but to a rest. Brow to brow. Content to be the prop that held him up. Content to wait patiently for mysteries to reveal themselves to him.

“I will build a truth for you,” he whispered, soft into Dar’s ear. “I am a patient man. I have all the time in the world. Give me time, and I will build the truth you want for you. You will not regret choosing me. I promise.”

Dar breathed around the laugh. Around the weight of fondness in his chest. He moved up, a little. Enough to rest his lips above soft, dry ones.

“I never did,” he admitted lightly. “And I doubt I ever will.”

And then he leaned down, into a kiss that felt like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hieronymus was inspired by [this image](https://honourablejester.tumblr.com/post/627342933003206656/gogret-meanwhilebackinthedungeon-the) of a tired hunchbacked wizard, and things pretty much spiralled from there. Heh.


End file.
